


Kill for you

by Queenofthefaceless



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cussing, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28090119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenofthefaceless/pseuds/Queenofthefaceless
Summary: Sandor is caught trespassing in Winterfell and is brought before the Queen. But his confession as to why he was there in the first place goes north (pun intended) really fast.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	Kill for you

The afternoon light broke into her chamber, wearing its dashing golden, yellow and orange highlights, seemingly dancing slowly on the wooden floor and stone hard fireplace. It was not the typical North weather, so sunny, but Sansa embraced it nevertheless. She spent minutes in a row at her window, admiring the way the sun was embracing the snow, soaking up the frozen beauty.

There was a sudden knock on her door, yet Sansa did not look away. _A few more moments here_ , she thought.

“Your Grace, pardon me,” the maester said. “The guards captured an intruder on our grounds.”

Sansa huffed and turned around to see the concerned look on the maester’s face, and waltzed out of the room straight to the great hall.

“Do we know anything of this intruder?”

“I’m afraid not, your Grace. He seems very enraged and curses loudly on us. The men say he’s the biggest man they’d ever seen.”

Sansa stopped for a second before entering the hall, mind and heart racing alike. Tallest man, angry, cursing a lot... it all depicted the image of a man she used to be afraid of when she was younger, and nowadays a man who she’d...

“Your Grace?” the maester asked shyly, seeing how Sansa had dozed off in her thoughts.

“Bring him in,” she ordered, taking her rightful seat at the table, anxiously watching the door.

Years went by between then and the last time she had seen the man she suspected her wardens caught. She reminisced the last night she had seen him and remembered every single detail as if it were yesterday. His drunkenness, fear erupting from his voice, face and armor covered in blood and mud, and his sure-as-hell offer to take her back home, to flee away with her, to protect her. And she remembered refusing him, thus sealing her faith for the years to come, regret and pain swallowing her whole, as well as a constant feeling of restlessness and danger. As if somehow... she did not feel safe without that violent man around.

She still had his cloak from the night the Blackwater burned. The one he had left behind. She still could not say with certainty why she had kept it. She had it washed and folded nicely in her chamber, kept under the bed for keeping. Keeping a part of that memory and him alive.

 _“Take your fucking hands off of me!”_ a harsh voice reached her ears.

Sansa’s blue eyes fixed the man in cause, being held tightly by four of her guards, and still they struggled to keep him in one place. She giggled in her mind, thinking how ridiculously proud he used to be about being a strong and tall man that almost no one could withstand. 

She further inspected his clothes, hair and face... and then she saw it.

The burned half of his face he’d always hated, always been so self-conscious about. 

Her heart skipped several beats in a row. 

_It’s him._

“You may release him now,” she told the guards, much to their surprise.

“You heard the Queen, let him go!” the Commander of the guard yelled at his men.

At once, all four abandoned the man and took their hands off of him along with the ropes holding him still. He finally looked at her, taking the image in like the best wine he ever drank.

She was incredibly different, he thought. But also, not changed one bit. Same auburn hair, same eyes - though they carried a much deeper emotion in them. She no longer exuded fear or sadness. She was _powerful_ , _strong_ , that much he could tell for sure. She was sitting straight and solemnly, and, of course, she was the Queen now. He smiled to himself.

“This man is no intruder. He is an old friend,” she told the Commander of the guard, who bowed and resumed his service. “I want clean clothes for him, a chamber, and see that he is well fed and cleaned. Draw him a bath”, she further instructed the maidens, who rushed to do her bidding at once.

Before he could open his mouth to say something, anything, to her, she already stood up and spoke with the maester again.

“Let me know when he has received all the care that I have asked for him.”

“Yes, your Grace.”

Sansa left the great hall with a turmoil in her heart. She was relieved, happy, excited, yet at the same time anxious. Those were feelings she had at least an hour or two to sort out and decompress before facing, finally, Sandor Clegane.

***

Sansa was still preoccupied with Wintefell’s marvelous landscape, though now through the dark, it seemed less interesting than it was only hours before. Her hands were one in the other behind her back. The logs were afire somewhere behind her, warmth reaching in through her fur and gown.

“Your Grace,” the voice of her maester was heard. “Your... friend is ready.”

“Send him in.”

Sansa’s calm tone gave the maester quite something to think about. He had always seen her impassible and resilient, ever since he came into her service, yet now it seemed to him as if she was perhaps trying all too hard.

“In here, your Grace?”

“Yes.”

She did not turn around, so she could not see him bow and open the door wider for Sandor Clegane to enter. There was a small sound behind Sansa, indicating the door had been shut. The only audible thing was Sandor’s rugged breath.

“Do I have to call you Grace now? Or Majesty?” he asked.

His voice is not as harsh and rough as I recall, Sansa thought. She still hesitated to face him a bit, so she made her way to the fireplace without so much as one glance in his direction.

“That would be appropriate,” she replied after a while.

“Congratulations. You made it Queen after all.”

“Do you know why my guards believed you were an intruder?”

Sansa arranged some of the logs in the middle of the fire, which caused Sandor to shiver behind her and try his best to ignore her delicate hands minding the heat so effortlessly.

“Cause they didn’t know who the hell I am,” he responded, moving an inch closer to the fireplace and hence, toward her.

“It’s because you were trespassing. Why were you trespassing on our grounds, Sandor?”

There was no way he could have mocked her this time. She was more serious than ever, demanding answers through a tone so calm and so soothing, that it seemed rather unrecognizable to Sandor after so many years of her absence.

“I asked you why, Sandor.”

He hesitated. He knew the answer very well; it did not require thinking at all. But he was unsure if it was the right time to say it out loud. And in front of her, no less.

“I killed some peasants.”

His answer was as blunt as she had expected. And it was all she needed to hear before finally turning around and look at him. Her face could not remain porcelain-like as she analyzed him from head to toes.

His beard grew, that was more than obvious; his facial scars were not as red and oozing as they had been once. They appeared to had healed at last and taken the healthy color of skin. He wore clean, loose clothes, his skin was clear of any cuts of any sort, and his eyes were not as enraged as she once knew. On the contrary, they seemed sort of calmer.

Sansa took a few steps closer to him, his height dominating hers still, in spite of her actually growing taller a few inches since last time he’d saw her.

“And why did you thought that was reasonable for you to do?” she continued her questionnaire.

“They were talking shit. Your _Grace_.”

Sansa couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or not, but for the sake of the moment itself, she chose to believe he was not.

“What were they saying that they had to have the terrible deaths you gave them?”

“Why do you assume their deaths were terrible?”

“I’ve seen you kill people before, Sandor. I know how you work. It’s never smooth and clean.”

He chuckled nervously, knowing she was in the right. Of course she was. She knew bits and pieces of him that even he struggled to recognize most of the time.

“If you really want to know – _your Grace_ – they were talking about you.”

“I don’t suppose kind words, judging by your reaction.”

“Not by any chance.”

“What were they saying?”

Sandor growled, uncomfortable even with reminiscing about the vile words.

“Why does it matter? They were bad-mouthing you, they died!”

“What were they saying, Sandor?”

It felt as each time Sansa was addressing him by his birth name, it had such an impact on Sandor that he couldn’t help but confess in front of her. Anything.

“Seven Hells... you want to know so badly?!”

Sandor came closer to Sansa, his chest nearly bumping into her. He gulped as he looked down on her, his temper hard to control. Alas, he managed it through miraculous ways.

“They were saying that a Queen in the North is a weak thing to have. That they need a proper man to rule, not some lady. And that the Queen is only good for... for fucking. They said they’d like to... do all kinds of filthy things to you. That’s it. Happy?”

He looked utterly angered and disgusted, and Sansa experienced a flashback to when Sandor had saved her from being raped in the ambush by three peasant men. He had the same look now as he did back then. Repulsion, anger. 

She smiled to herself.

“Then I suppose you were in the right.”

Sandor furrowed his brows, taking two large steps back and looking at her again. Even the outfit she was wearing was incredible and powerful: the long, blue gown was decorated with little details, leafs and wolf heads, a leather strap chained around her shoulders through her chest was completing it. It matched her eyes very well, Sandor thought for a fleeting moment.

“Why are you here though?”

“I told you – “

“You told me nothing of the sort. You confessed to me about your crime. Which I will consider a favor for the Queen and the crown alike. But I don’t know why you are _here_ , in the North, openly killing people on my grounds.”

Sandor hesitated again. He already said too much. And she wouldn’t understand if he said more. Or... would she? Was this the chance he had craved or in his many sleepless nights? For him to say his truth, find the right words and out himself to her, and she would just... understand? Accept? _Return the feeling_?

“I came back here. To... see you,” he said almost too fast to catch. But Sansa got it.

“To see me?”

“People were roaring about the new Queen in the North, Sansa Stark, and I had to see it for myself. You made it far, little bird.”

This time Sansa was the one who gulped, caught off guard. She hadn’t heard that pet name in years, and it hit all too differently this time around. Much like a romantic confession she needed to hear so desperately.

“You came only to see me sit in my royal chair?”

Sandor muttered a ‘no’ that he believed was inaudible, but Sansa caught this one as well. Her heart trembled in her chest, longing for some more words. Though she realized she might’ve been expecting way too much from a man of the sword.

“I came here to see you, aye. Because... I had to see you. Again. I knew this for a while. For a long while, from back in King’s Landing, for fuck’s sake. I knew I always wanted to see you. But you were just… a little bird.”

He giggled, a sound that Sansa had never heard the infamous Hound make before.

“You were this scared little bird, repeating all that she was taught like a good girl, never standing up for herself. Sure, you couldn’t have done it, but even so, every single thing scared you. I was... still am, maybe... a brutal dog. Ugly, brutal dog. How could you think anything else of me? But I knew this much. All I wanted to do was protect you. Protect you, save you, kill for you if necessary. Turns out it is necessary.”

Sandor took again one step closer to Sansa, who maintained her straight posture.

“I’d kill anyone and anything for you, little bird. I would slaughter villages if it would mean keepin’ you safe.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“You say that now, but if there are more cunts like those who talk shit behind your back – “

Sansa reached to grab Sandor’s hand and tangle it with her own, smiling lightly at him.

“Please do not slaughter villages. Not even for me. I know you can, but you can’t. I forbid it while you’re here. It would look bad for me as Queen.”

Sandor nodded in agreements, lowering his head briefly.

“You know... how I feel about you,” he mumbled.

“I... really don’t. What do you feel?”

Sandor stared at her for quite a while, all sorts of emotions running wild throughout his entire body. He was suddenly _very_ aware of the fact that he was basically holding Sansa’s hand into his, and he could and would not let go for the life of him.

“You’re more than anything I could ever deserve”, he mumbled again, voice seemingly cracking. “All that I am… which is not much at all, I’ll admit... is yours. My life is yours.”

Sansa rubbed his hand with her thumb and then smiled widely at him. She felt the familiar urge to cup his cheek, watching breathlessly as he closed his eyes and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath that entire time.

“You are welcome to remain here”, she whispered, bringing his face a tad closer to hers, feeling overwhelmed as well.

“Thank you. Your Grace. Fuck, I better get used to this.”

“Right now, in my chamber, I’m not your queen. I am Sansa, a woman who finds comfort knowing you are here. Someone who feels safe and glad to have you here. And – all that I am is yours, too. But don’t ever say again you are not worth much, Sandor. You are to me, at the very least.”

“Then I couldn’t give two shits about anyone else, ever.”


End file.
